Court order shuts web sites over H-1B visa fracas

The hiring by U.S. firms of foreign programmers with H-1B visas has long been controversial in the tech world. A recent judicial action in New Jersey touches a nerve in that ongoing irritation.

New Jersey state judge James Hurley recently issued an order shutting down three web sites in response to a charge that the sites defamed the programming staffing firm Apex Technology.

Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Kurt Opsahl said it is one thing to order that allegedly defamatory materials be taken down but quite another to shut down the web sites entirely.

“Imagine if a court could order Amazon.com or Yelp.com shut down because of a disparaging review of a single product,” Opsahl said in a critique.

Two of the web sites, endh1b.com and itgrunt.com were inaccessible Sunday evening. A third, guestworkerfraud.com, was still online.

Opsahl writes that:

The dispute apparently started when someone uploaded a document purporting to be an Apex employment agreement to docstoc.com, and noted several terms the poster considered unfair to H1-B workers . . . The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations . . . The document and the surrounding controversy prompted further heated discussion in which the websites allegedly accused Apex of being a “bodyshop” that engaged in bad practices while employing H1-B visa workers from India.